Extensive, complicated zoning is an added barrier towards building more homes and businesses.
It’s time that the Township of Langley simplified the process.
Currently there are more than two dozen different types of zoning (too many!) and they are all very exclusive.
The Township should adopt a more inclusive mode – don’t say what a property may be, but only layout what it CAN’T be.
Instituting an “as-of-right” system would also help speed up the development approval process.
In 2018 a report stated that a home building permit took 17 months to get approved – that’s criminal.
While I’m sure the staff at the Township office has done their best to cut that time down, projects still needlessly get stuck at both the bureaucratic and political level, holding up the advancement of our wonderful city.
Langley should apply some of the lessons learned from the Japanese model.
Japan uses a system of zoning where the government sets out in advance guidelines on what can be built in each area. Any development that fits the rules is allowed by right (“as-of-right” system), meaning that if a project complies with the zoning, it doesn’t need to go through a discretionary review process.
A certain level of NIMBYism exists in all communities and our North American building-approval structure encourages this.
A house is often a person’s biggest investment, which they naturally want to protect. Local homeowners will often lobby against development near them, which they see as a potential threat to the value of their property. When homeowners are a majority of voters, naturally politicians listen to them and restrict development.
Residents respond by self-selecting into the most affluent communities they can afford and pulling up the ladder once they’re in.
This great rigidity in allowed uses per zone in North American zoning means that urban planning departments must really micromanage to the smallest detail everything to have a decent city. Because if they forget to zone for enough commercial zones or schools, people can’t simply build what is lacking, they’d need to change the zoning, and therefore confront the NIMBYs.
Because of the system’s complexity in North America, urban planning departments reign supreme there (and often make mistakes), whereas in Japan, builders, private promoters, school boards and the cities themselves can take much more initiative.
Japan’s system is more flexible because it allows higher-use zones to be designated later on without forbidding lower-use activities. Residential is residential, which means that rented, owned, single-family, multi-family and studio apartment blocks coexist. It’s time to get politics out of housing in Langley.